86 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Our climate is good, the summer months being sufficiently long to en- 

 sure us at least seven months of good pasturage and our extremely hot 

 weather is not often so protracted as to materially interfere with the manu- 

 facture of butter and cheese. 



Being in the midst of the beef producing industry we find a rapid sale 

 and at hig prices for ail calves not suitable to use in the dairy. Our rainfall 

 is usually sufficiently abundant as to rarely permit us to suffer from drought 

 and the dratnage is good enough to prevent an excess of wet land; while we 

 have but few springs there is ample supply of water to be obtained from our 

 deep wells. 



The manner of conducting dairies in central Illinois will always depend 

 upon the varying circumstances peculiar to the different localities. In com- 

 munities where the farmers live at no great distances apart and the people 

 generally engage in this business, the co-operative systems will usually be 

 found most expedient. 



But in localities where but few of the farmers engage in the business so 

 that many largegrain or meat farms are interspersed among the dairy farms, 

 making the distance to the creameries very great, co-operation in most any 

 form becomes almost impracticable on account of our periodically muddy 

 roads. During many months of the year, on account of our sticky, muddy 

 roads, the cost to many farmers of delivering the milk to the factories is 

 larger than the cost of manufacturing the milk into butter or cheese. To 

 this hindrance is probably due more than to any other the backwardness 

 of the dairy industry in this portion of the State. 



Under the existing circumstances of periodically bad roads as well as 

 the isolation of the dairy farms due to the large number of grain and stock 

 farms, the most practical way at the present time, at least, for farmers to 

 engage in the dairy business in central Illinois is to manufacture the milk 

 products upon the farm, making butter only and using the skim milk for 

 raising either calves or pigs. Such farms would form the starting points of 

 co-operative creameries, as other farmers of the neighborhood become in- 

 duced to engage in the dairy business. 



To be successful in the dairy business a farmer engaging in it should 

 provide himself with cows such as yield butter in the largest amounts and of 

 the best flavor, texture and color , and also with appliances best adapted to 

 making butter with the greatest ease and of the finest quality, and unless he 

 provides himself with the best apparatus and uses them so as to produce 

 first-class products, he would better not engage in the business. 



The cows should not only be capable of making large amounts of good 

 butter, but should also be persistent milkers. Comfortable quarters should 

 be provided for the cows, both in summer and in winter. Ample amounts 

 of feed should be provided such as the cows relish and such as prove the best 

 for producing butter. With good cows, good feed and good shelter, good 

 milkers and careful hands should be employed. The management of the 

 milk should be with the best appliances and in accordance with the most ap- 

 proved methods. The person who makes the butter should so far be reliev- 

 ed from other cares as to consider the care of the milk as the principal work. 



While the dairy room need not be expensive it should be fitted up with 



